Wednesday November 14 @2:30 pm 2012Lehrer and Sloan will present a Crossing the BLVD presentation as part of the Foundation year theme of PROTEST at the School of Art+Design at Purchase College, SUNYPerception Lab, Room 1016, Visual Arts Building

As immigration policy is hotly debated around the country in terms of national and cultural security, Crossing the BLVD: strangers, neighbors, aliens in a new America presents the very human stories of why immigrants and refugees have migrated to the U.S. and what their experiences have been since they came here pre- and post-9/11. Lehrer and Sloan will discuss their book, traveling exhibition, animations, audio CD and performance with photographs, sounds and stories and how this cross-platform project uses the tools of contemporary art to create a multimedia experience reflecting the changing face of America.

Winner 2004 Brendan Gill Prize Municipal Art Society of NY

“Immigrant life in Queens, as told in the intimate, rich, comic, ironic and sad stories so often seen but not heard in America’s big cities… Archie Bunker doesn’t live here anymore — not in the Queens of Crossing the Blvd. The first-person narratives are engaging… The stories are so different, and yet many of the immigrants’ lives are so similar… What links them all is the desperation and desire that brought them here. As one immigrant says in Crossing the BLVD, ‘America can do without you, but you can’t do without America’.” The Washington Post Lynne Duke.

“Crossing the BLVD is a powerful social record… Most of the subjects live in Queens, but their stories resonate far beyond the borders of this multicultural New York borough. What often gets lost in the national debate on immigration is the human dimension, an understanding of the lives of those people who give up everything to come here. Crossing the BLVD lets them tell their stories… We see the subjects’ faces in the photographs, hear their voices, and enter into their lives through cherished mementos they have carried from home to home… Extraordinary stories… a living work of art.” The New York Times Benjamin Genocchio

“Crossing the BLVD boldly carries the tradition of oral history into the 21st Century. Electrifying!”Eve Ensler, author The Vagina Monologues

A Life In Books wins The 2014 IPPY (Independent Publisher) OUTSTANDING BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARDfor “MOST ORIGINAL CONCEPT.” “A stunningly unique take on the novel that unabashedly explores the relationship between the narrator and reader, as well as the fragile and often blurry line that distinguishes truth and fiction. With A Life In Books, Lehrer has upended the modern novel form and its narrative limitations, creating a rich and engaging story through visual literature… Mind-blowing… reality bending… a laugh riot and a visual feast.”

A Life In Books also wins a Next Generation Indie Book Award, a Print Magazine Regional Design Award (NYC), a National Indie Book Award, a CBAA Exhibition Prize (College Book Art Association).

A LIFE IN BOOKS: The Rise and Fall of Bleu Mobley is an illuminated novel that contains 101 books within it, all written by Lehrer’s protagonist—Bleu Mobley—a controversial author who finds himself in prison looking back on his life and career. Mobley’s autobiography/apologia is paired with a review of all 101 of his books, each represented by its first-edition cover design and catalog copy, and more than a third of his books are excerpted. The resulting retrospective contrasts the published writings (which read like short stories) with the confessional memoir, forming a most unusual portrait of a well-intentioned, obsessively inventive (if ethically challenged) visionary. A LIFE IN BOOKS explores the creative process of a writer/artist, as it reflects upon a half century of American/global events, and grapples with the future of the book as a medium, and the lines that separate and blur truth, myth, and fiction.

In his funny, thought provoking performance/readings, Warren Lehrer presents an overview of Bleu Mobley’s life in books via many of Mobley’s book cover designs, book-like objects, and other biographical materials including animations and video performances of Mobley book excerpts by the band BETTY and actress/poet La Bruja.

“A book-lover’s fictional treat of books that never were. A Life In Books is ultimately about survival, and transforming the sadness of life into art. As Whitman said, ‘I contain multitudes,’ and Bleu Mobley contains 101 books and a belief in the bounty of life. Wonderful!”Michael Silverblatt, BOOKWORM, KCRW

“A tour de force of graphic design, illustration and writing. Guaranteed to bring a smile.”Ken Carbone THE HUFFINGTON POST

“In the era of cookie-cutter books and rubber-stamped stories, Warren Lehrer’s A Life in Books is fresh, original, idiosyncratic, beautiful, and important.” Rabih Alameddine, author of Koolaids, Hakawati, and I, the Divine

“A Life in Books: The Rise and Fall of Bleu Mobley is a typographical and design tour de force.” Ellen Shapiro, PRINT MAGAZINE

“A genre-defying night that fuses art and literature, prose and design into a multi-media presentation unlike any other.” Skylight Books

Stay Tuned: Judith Sloan will be presenting the kick off performance ofCrossing the BLVDat the 2015 KO Festival of Performance in Amherst, MA weekend of July 10; she will be performingYO MISS!as the keynote performance at the National Oral History Association Conference in Tampa, FL October 2015.

EarSay Youth will be performing on Sunday Feb. 8 at the Poetic License Theatre Festival, 2015. Stay tuned for details.

Judith Sloan is an actor, audio artist, writer, radio producer, human rights activist, educator and poet whose work combines humor, pathos and a love of the absurd. For over twenty years, Sloan has been producing and presenting interdisciplinary works in audio and theater, portraying voices often ignored by the mass media. She will be performing YO MISS! Teaching Inside the Cultural Divide and Crossing the BLVD in July and the fall of 2014.

“In YO MISS!, Judith Sloan’s art and teaching cross-pollinate. Performing with musical collaborators, she re-enacts and riffs on her experiences teaching teenagers from myriad worlds: refugee camps, struggling neighborhoods, prisons. It is a performance about performances, a story containing many stories.” New York Times

“Crossing the BLVD is a whirlwind tour and love poem of what has often been called the most racially and ethnically diverse county in America. In the tradition of the playwright Anna Deavere Smith, Ms. Sloan performs “Crossing the BLVD” adopting the personae (and respectfully mimicking the accents) of the varied immigrants whose stories are in the book… The New York Times, City Room Blog, Sewell Chan

“Crossing boldly carries the tradition of oral history into the 21st Century. Electrifying!” Eve Ensler author The Vagina Monologues

A world view that sees comedy and tragedy as two bones of the same skeleton in the closet. Superb!.”The Scotsman (Scotland’s National Newspaper) Sara O’Sullivan (London)

“Funny and sad, topical and biting… Exquisite comic timing best of all, Sloan can make you see your world in a slightly different way. And that’s what theater is supposed to do.” The Indianapolis Star

“In listening to what people have to say, Judith Sloan captures the essence of their lives…She is one part Studs Terkel, one part Lily Tomlin, two-parts originality.”The Herald Bloomington, Indiana

Listen Here to a YO MISS story:

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Transforming Trauma Into Art is an EarSay initiative, created and directed by Judith Sloan, born out of our partnership with the International High School at LaGuardia Community College where many teenagers have emigrated to the U.S. from war-zones and conflict-zones. The premise of this workshop is based on healing through artistic expression using a combination of music, movement, theatre and storytelling. This process helps release the stories and stressors that prevent people—who have been traumatized by war, economic or natural disasters—from moving forward. This program brings an understanding of confronting obstacles through artistic expression to communities that are poor, displaced, or don’t have access to artistic training, serving approximately 450 students. The project grows out of our commitment to creating artistic works that evolve out of individual experience and community. In this case, the community is immigrant and refugee teenagers attending school in New York City. At a time of war, global tension, and polarization, our program encourages a depth of scholarship and storytelling that shapes the experience of the participants, giving them tools to make connections between cultures, shed light on the complexity and humanity of each individual, and deepen what it means or could mean to be part of a global community.

This video, directed and animated by Warren Lehrer with Brandon Campbell, features the words of Eugene Hütz—leader of the gypsy-punk-cabaret band Gogol Bordello—sharing his views on ‘globalization’ and putting forward an alternative vision of what he calls “multi-kontra-culture.” This animation, with sound production and arrangement by Judith Sloan, is the newest manifestation of Lehrer/Sloan’s multi-media project, Crossing the BLVD: strangers, neighbors, aliens in a new America, which documents and portrays new immigrants and refugees in the United States.

1001 Voices: A new symphony / with Music by Frank London, Libretto by Judith Sloan, Visual Animations by Warren Lehrer

Over 800 people of all ages and backgrounds attended the world premier on April 29th, 2012

Music composed by Frank LondonLibretto by Judith SloanVisuals by Warren Lehrer with Brandon Campbell

Premiered by the Queens Symphony OrchestraConducted by Constantine Kitsopoulos, Queens Symphony Orchestra music directorPerformed by full orchestra and a 190-voice chorus comprised of the Queens College Choral Society and Queens College Choir, James John, Music DirectorFeatured Tabla Soloist Deep SinghSpoken word performed by Judith Sloan in English with additional translations in Spanish, Russian, Chinese and Arabic by Dailyn Despradel, Krussia, Haojie Huang, and Catherine Hanna.